Guns and Roses

I initially decided not to blog about the Virginia Tech shootings because it was all too terrible and there was nothing much to say other than it was all too terrible. And then I received an email from a reader who basically expressed surprise that I had not commented since I was “from the South” and grew up in a small town.

Hmm.

Well, first, being from the South no more makes me an authority on this than anyone else. I think it affected us all.

And if you really want to split hairs, I’m from North Carolina and everybody knows that we North Carolinians have a thing with Virginia. Virginia is just so… Virginia. And don’t even get me started on the traffic.

And I did grow up in a small town, a really small town. When I was a kid, there were no traffic lights in my town. I still remember the day that the blinking light was put up – we put a picture of it in the school yearbook. I knew the names of every kid in my class every year until I left school.

Blacksburg is certainly bigger than that. And clearly, Blacksburg is smaller than Philadelphia. It is somewhere in between.

So, on those counts, I really don’t have that much of a tie to the community there. It’s not about geography or community size.

But as a mother, a sister, a friend… Yeah, I get it. And I can’t even begin to understand what’s going on in the minds of those students. It had to have been a horrifying experience. I don’t know how you ever find “normal” again after that.

I also haven’t blogged about it yet because I didn’t want it to turn into a debate about guns so much so that we lose sight of the tragedy. I felt similarly after the Amish school shooting.

So I guess I will say this. I am so saddened for the families of the victims. I pray for strength for those that survived. And like many other terrible things that happen to us, I hope that we can take something good out of this. Right now, I just can’t imagine what that could be.

Tagged as: gun violence, guns